


i have written you down, you will live forever

by a_mind_at_work (Madame_Marauder)



Series: revolution at three am [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Other, Pre-reunion, Reincarnation AU, alex writes emo poetry, john and eliza are besties, just bare with me please, ned and alex are adoptive brothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 14:19:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madame_Marauder/pseuds/a_mind_at_work
Summary: they say they teach our history/but it seems that only few can see/what there was in you and me/my lover in my memorypoetry isn't always useless.or; beginning down a path long needing to be walked(yet another reincarnation au)





	i have written you down, you will live forever

**Author's Note:**

> haha yeah here i am three months later with an entirely new au, whoops

   Three in the morning is a curious time to be alive. It's the time when unsleeping drunkards finally succumb to their own exhaustion; it's the time when anxious highschoolers hold themselves and cry; it's the time when nightmare-stricken writers wake up with a shout on their lips and pain in their chests.

    Alexander almost knocks his phone off of his bedside table when he goes fumbling for it in the darkness of his room, no light except the gentle beams of frail moonlight trickling through the window.

    3:27am, the screen says, and he leans back against the pillow with a trembling sigh. His phone unlocks with a quiet click- he doesn't need to be up for another two and a half hours, but there's no way on earth that he's going to be able to sleep after that.

    Scrolling through social media doesn't exactly do anything to ease the phantom pain in his abdomen, the nonexistent chill in his fingers, the memories crawling up his throat. The first dozen posts he sees are variations of  _ look how pretty the snow is _ , which is completely counterproductive. 

     He gives up on that and elects to stare at the ceiling instead, trying to grasp at the only positives of the memories running through his mind yet again. It takes as long as it always does, rifling through the  _ paincoldfear _ to find something he can stand to think about, but he manages it eventually.

     This is why he can’t truly hate the dreams. Out of everything there's always something; the precise color of his Laurens’s eyes, the exact way Eliza tilted her head, the little details he clings to in order to keep himself sane.

     This morning, it's how John’s hair spilled across the pillow when he let it down, like melted gold across the white fabric of the pillowcase, silky and smooth when he ran his fingers through it. It's the complete opposite of the rest of the dream- soft and gentle and pleasant- and Alexander holds onto it like a lifeline until the hundred worse facets fade back into the background of his thoughts.

     He adds it to the memo he keeps on his phone, then finds his headphones and rolls over to watch a MBMBAM animatic on YouTube. God bless easy distractions.

 

     His alarm beeps halfway through a TEDTalk on the worsening socioeconomic statuses of modern college students, and Alexander drags himself out of bed and through his morning.

     As always, his day is completely and utterly unremarkable. Not bad, necessarily, but nothing worth too much note. Just the usual highs and lows of junior year in high school.

     The one point of interest is another page of his notebook being filled, another long, rambling poem written. There's only a few pages left; he'll need a new notebook soon.

     His brother- his found-brother who is now his adoptive-brother- flops down on the couch next to him. “Are you ever going to do something with those?”

     “Do something,” Alexander echoes back. “Like?”

     Ned waves a hand at him and props his feet up on the coffee table. “Publish them? People buy it. Hell, people buy poetry books with four or five lines on each page. They'd buy yours.”

     Alexander stares at him. “You do realize that half of this is me missing Laurens and Betsey, and the other half is an existential crisis about my creations spiraling out of control, right?”

     “So is most poetry,” Ned insists. “I mean, you have what, 120 pages in there? Most of them full? That's a book right there. A small one, yeah, but people still buy shorter.”

     He blinks. “Do you remember the  _ last  _ time I published poetry?”

     That gets a laugh, but Ned still looks back at him with a smile. “Okay, yeah, but I'd like to think we've learned from that. Just think about it.”

     Alexander rolls his eyes and goes back to his AP physics homework, notebook tucked safely under his leg.

      “It'd look good on college apps,” Ned adds, and he considers it slightly more seriously.

     He calls it  _ ‘legacies’  _ and publishes it on Amazon halfway through his senior year.

     It sells a few hundred copies, to his surprise and Ned’s total smugness. It doesn't explode or anything, but it's a nice boost to his college savings.

     Several of the reviews are less about his writing, and more about people wondering who he's writing about. And that's not something they're going to find in the pages of the book; everything there has been changed just enough to not name any names.

     Ned gets his acceptance letter to Columbia a day before Alexander does, and they both about have a heart attack when they realize they could go to their alma mater together.

     “I miss my city,” Alexander says quietly. “I'm going.”

     His brother smiles. “They still have a great pre-med program.”

     Moving into the dorms is the weirdest experience; he's in a newer building, but right across from the old ones. He remembers most of the layout on the tour, but the campus has expanded, and it throws them both off.

     Someone in their orientation group starts complaining about the half-mile walk from the dorm to the science hall, and at least three other people inhale in unison and start up with, “Back in my day-”

     The five of them all pause and glance at each other, and burst out laughing as the new souls look at them in confusion.

     It's good to be home.

 

* * *

  
  


     Three in the morning is a curious time to be alive. It's the time when obnoxious brothers finally get off the Xbox; it's the time when panicked English majors finally crawl into bed; it's the time when best friends get frantic texts from one another.

_ BestofBetsey: JOHN _

_                           JOHN JOHN JOHN _

_    turtlegay: its 3am liz wtf _

_    BestofBetsey: YOU NEED TO READ THIS _

_    turtlegay: read what??? _

_    BestofBetsey: I'LL BRING IT TOMORROW _

_                           BUT JESUS FUCK _

_    turtlegay: what?? is?? it?? _

_    BestofBetsey: on the first page-  _

_                           “you said you always wanted peace/something you never lived to see/but i know that you believed/in every piece of me/so i will make this be/our softer, sweeter legacy/my darling memory” _

_    turtlegay: i _

_                   thats _

_                   EHAT IS THIS _

_    BestofBetsey: book of poetry _

_                           self-published by one A.Harrison _

_    turtlegay: adjksjjxhfhsjhgxhcjfz _

_                   what the fuck _

_                   what the FUCK _

_    BestofBetsey: i know _

_    turtlegay: WHAT THE  F U C K _

_    BestofBetsey: I KNOW _

_    turtlegay: hhhhhhh thats him _

_    BestofBetsey: oh my god you have no idea _

_    turtlegay: ??? _

_    BestofBetsey: page 27- _

_                           titled, ‘my dearest’ _

_                           “i know you dreamed of more/than what the world had in store/and if by a miracle i/could reverse the hands of time/then i would take yours in mine/and tell you that truly, i love you. it was not until you bade me adieu/that i realized that you/had no idea just how true/my love was for you.  i should have done more/than what fate had in store/but for now, i love you, my dearest.” _

_    turtlegay: THATS _

_                    THATS THE LETTERS _

_                    THATS QUOTING THE LETTERS _

_    BestofBetsey: yep _

_                           theres more _

_    turtlegay: ??????? _

_    BestofBetsey: page 47- _

_                           titled, ‘an apology’ _

_                           “you were the best of wives/and throughout our lives/i never did enough for you/and i hope you knew/that even when i shut myself away/and could find no words to say/i loved you each and every day/and i'm sorry for what i did/and what i didn't/and how i left.” _

_    turtlegay: is he apologizing for DYING _

_    BestofBetsey: oh you got that out of it too _

_                           this thing is 150 pages long _

_                           some of it is two or three pages long _

_                           some of it is REALLY short _

_                           at least half of it seems directed at us _

_    turtlegay: and the other half? _

_    BestofBetsey: for other people, talking about his life (pg15 is about the hurricane), and more than one whining about his banks _

_    turtlegay: he would do that wouldn't he _

_    BestofBetsey: I'll bring it for you tomorrow _

_                           i feel like ur gonna want ur own copy tho _

_                           there's a hell of a lot more, those are just the shorter ones _

_    turtlegay: yeah _

_                    yeah send me the amazon link _

_    BestofBetsey: will do, one sec _

 

**Author's Note:**

> okay hi im back hellO 
> 
> no, the City is not abandoned  
> no, Beli3ver is probably not abandoned (we shall see)  
> no, im not dead  
> yes, this is another new series  
> yes, the title is lyrics from a bastille song  
> yes, this one will be continued, i Promise
> 
>  
> 
> the 'last time i published poetry' thing is referencing this nsfw mess: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=Project%3A"Hamilton%20Papers"%20Author%3A"Hamilton%2C%20Alexander"&s=1511311111&r=2
> 
> yes, hamilton did actually write and publish that according to scholars  
> no, im not sorry for sharing
> 
>  
> 
> my tumblr: @discount-satan  
> my writing tumblr: @littlelionroar  
> kudos and comments are my lifeblood!!


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